Featured Stories

Why I Extra Life!

September 24, 2018 | By aolczak

Hi all! I’m Amanda. I have been participating in Extra Life the past 7 years in some way, shape or form. I have always been big into doing charity and volunteer work from helping with Relay For Life’s to Habitat for Humanity. My geeky boyfriend, Brian Moats, actually found out about Extra Life just after his mom passed away 8 years ago and needed something to distract himself from the anniversary each year. That was 2012. We held small events at our house for some of our friends, to hang out, play games and raise funds for our local children’s hospital! He wanted to grow from just him being a registered participate to more people getting involved, hence how I got recruited to help out. It’s now been 5 years since I became a registered member for Extra Life. What better way to do what you already love doing to help others?

Fast forward to 2016 and our mall got this new comic and gaming store, Four Horsemen of Clarksburg. With the help of the shop owner, Mike Tressler, and his commitment to building a larger community, we joined forces to make Extra Life 2017 game day a huge success for our area! We raised over $1,000 that day for our local WVU Medicine Children’s Hospital! I enjoyed helping organize the event, recruit gamers to run games, teach games and just over all have a great game day.

My team, WVGamers, this year has held quarterly events at our friendly local game store. We held a One Up Sign Up event in January to recruit new Extra Life participates while playing games. In April, we did a Half Way to Extra Life International Tabletop Day, where we held a mini game day event with raffle prizes and tons of gaming. In August, we held a Geek Yard Sale benefiting Extra Life, where table rental fees went directly to Extra Life at WVU Medicine Children’s Hospital and we received a number of donations as well that day.

This year’s game day on November 3rd we will be holding our 2nd Annual game day at the Four Horsemen of Clarksburg with my Extra Life team, WVGamers. During this event, we are hoping to have a few gaming tournaments, many game demos as well as a number of different raffle options. This year we are also planning on doing a Yoshi Egg Raffle where individuals can pay for a Yoshi Egg (Easter egg) from dozens in a kiddie pool and see what prize they win. We have a ton of amazing ideas that are flowing through our committee members heads and are hoping for another amazing game day experience. So here is a shout out to Brian Moats, Rebecca Gray and Stephen Shay. Thank you guys for believing in an amazing cause and putting up with my many meetings I organize for all the planning we’ve been doing this year. You all rock.

This year, I decided to give the Guild leadership team a shot and became the state secretary for West Virginia. The leadership team, as well as our amazing hospital organizers, have helped not only increase our recruitment thus far but also monetary donations for WVU Medicine Children’s Hospital this year. We all come from different work backgrounds, different nerdy worlds, but we all have one thing in common, helping the children. Thank you guys for all of your hard work and dedication.

This year, I have attended a number of different conventions, spoke to hundreds of individuals about Extra Life and how it helps the children and their families while they are unfortunately stuck in the hospital. I’m a social butterfly so I really enjoy meeting new people and talking about Extra Life and being able to be my weird nerdy self around like minded individuals.

Another amazing thing about Extra Life, it’s for gamers and games can consist of any number of different things that you classify as gaming: videogames, board games, card games, role play games (RPG’s), and athletics! So go out there, register, fundraise and play more games! REGISTER TODAY